Growing up, I was never sure if Earth Day was a real holiday or just an educational day posing as a holiday. I remember being in grade school and wondering if Mother Earth knew I hadn’t been recycling. Would she bring me presents this year? Was she even supposed to bring me presents? Were those vegan cookies that Mindy’s hippie mom sent her to school with really the best Earth Day had to offer?

Now that I’m older and have watched every episode of Captain Planet, I understand that it’s not about presents. It’s about getting into the spirit of Earth Day. Which means feeling a crippling sense of guilt that you should spread to others around you.

It means telling all your anti-conservation friends that the environmental movement isn’t about saving some rare owl, but about preventing the economic collapse that will occur if we destroy our natural resources. It’s about bad mouthing BP to your like minded friends. It’s about badmouthing your Congressman for voting to cut EPA funding. It’s about your own shame over not recycling much or ever or maybe once by accident.

But you still might want to leave some soy milk and vegan cookies out for Mother Nature. If you’ve done a really, really good job of shaming people into seeing reason all day, she just might stop by with some used Captain Planet VHS tapes.

And in the spirit of Earth Day, here is a classic clip of Ali G experiencing his own environmental awakening. Also, if your Earth Day guilt trip is getting the best of you, here are some amazing groups to volunteer with/donate to:

Waterkeeper Alliance
EcologyFund.com